Up to 45 people will be employed by Rainbow Confectionery as it looks to almost double its ­production capacity by expanding into Australia.

The company is keen to re-employ workers made redundant when the Prydes Confectionery Company closed the Maitland site in August last year.

The deal to purchase Metford Confectionery (the factory formerly known as Prydes and Australian Sweets) was completed last week and Rainbow Confectionery sales and marketing manager Simon Williams said he hoped it would be a “matter of weeks not months” before the site was up and running again.

“It is quite a significant investment from the company and will in effect double our ­production capacity,” he said.

“Our real priority is getting everything up and running again as the machines have not been used for a few months and we are working on a timeframe to reopen the factory.” 

The purchase marks a new era of sweet ­production in Maitland, which had been home to Prydes since the 1930s.

In recent times the Metford site had experienced a chequered history, with the company languishing in receivership for 12 months before being bought and the factory reopened by Sanchez Group Australia in 2009.

The factory was closed again last year when the company consolidated its operations at its Sydney headquarters.

But it will emerge with a new lease of life under the latest deal, in what is almost a case of history repeating itself for the Kiwi company.

Rainbow Confectionery was established in 2001 by a trio of private investors when Nestle closed down its factory in Oamaru, on the south island of New Zealand, after 50 years of operation.

The investors bought the Nestle plant, re-employed many of the redundant staff and began making confectionery including jellies, pineapple chunks, party mix and jelly beans.

The company will manufacture many of the same lollies at the Metford site, with the New Zealand and Maitland factories expected to eventually produce 9000 tonnes of ­confectionery a year.

This would make the company the biggest privately owned confectionary manufacturer in Australasia.

“The new plant adds huge scope to Rainbow’s business in both New Zealand and Australia,” managing director Ray White said. 

“We already export from New Zealand to Australia, but soon we will be driving trans-Tasman trade in both directions.

“It’s exciting to be able to apply the industry knowledge and production expertise we’ve accumulated over the past decade to this new plant and make it profitable again.”